Old Mole Variety Hour

The Old Mole burrows down to the roots of the great issues of our time – the struggles of ordinary people for democratic and sustainable ways of life. The Mole goes where corporate media fear to tread, supporting grassroots challenges to top-down authority and giving voice to movements that shake the foundations of an unjust society. The Moles' perspective is democratic, broadly socialist, and feminist. (We count Karl Marx as a friend).

Iven Hale hosts this episode and we hear Bill Resnick interviews Chris Toensig and Clayton Morgareidge comments on the continuing US war on terror, Syria, and ISIS; the movie moles comment on on the Elliot Smith biopic Heaven Adores You.

You can listen the the whole show by clicking the play-button below. Listen to and/or share individual segments by clicking the links above. You can follow the Old Mole on Twitter or friend us on Facebook. Send us comments, questions, suggestions, or ask to get involved with the collective at oldmolevarietyhour-at-gmail-dot-com.

What are governments doing, and not doing, about climate change, and what can we expect from the UN Summit Conference on Climate Change this week? Janet Redman, who studies and writes about climate policy at the Institute for Policy Studies, talks with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick about how neoliberal governments are relying more and more on the private, profit-making sector to solve problems only governments, led by their citizens, can solve. (Photo: lewishamdreamer/Flickr)

Sunday's big Climate Change March was followed up on Monday with a more militant action, Flood Wall Street at which a hundred arrests were made. In this Old Mole exclusive, Jan Haaken talks in real time with Diana Rempe, a Portland community psychologist, as she walks in this demonstration.

Some liberal economists have suggested that stopping climate change is an easy fix: it would be good for the economy, and we have the technology. But that ignores the political question of who controls the policy making institutions, as Rob Urie argues in this article from CounterPunch, read for us here by Tom Becker. Climate Change “is a problem created by the ‘approach to the world’ that is capitalism.” Photo Credit: Mother Earth News.

Inspired by the World Social Forum in Port Alegre, Brazil in 2005, community organizing movements have formed around the world and throughout the US. One of them is the Pacific Nortwest Social Forum which will be holding a People's Movement Assembly here in Portland this weekend -- 9/26-9/28. More information here. Two of its organizers, Rosalinda Nguyen and Edgar Franks, talk here with the Old Mole's Jan Haaken about the event and the movement.

As "world leaders" meet at the UN to discuss climate change and 400 thousand march for action in New York and here in Portland, today's Old Mole, hosted by Tom Becker, discuss the prospects for change the leaders ignore: action from the grass roots. Here are links to the show's segments; or you can use the play button to hear the whole show.

To hear the whole show, use the play button below. To hear individual pieces, follow the links above. You can become a friend of the Old Mole on Facebook, and we invite you to send us commentary and suggestions and interest in participation at oldmolevarietyhour - at - gmail - dot - com.

It's convenient to have the Old Mole audio files available.
Even more useful for some of us would be transcripts of the commentaries (Clayton Morgareidge). Written material allows a person a chance to review, consider, digest and refer to mentioned references & thinkers. The "Well Read Red" commentary from 4 Aug 08 is a good example of a piece I'd like to read at my own pace.